Welcome to the home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys)! Here you’ll find over 5,000 posts and formulas written over the past 16 years for everything from lotions, creams, and body butters to hair care products to fancy facial products filled with actives and cosmeceuticals! Enjoy the site without distractions – no ads, pop ups, sponsored posts, affiliate links, “one weird tricks” – all supported by readers like you.
Susan Barclay-Nichols I get e-mails and comments all the time asking if something is better than something else (for instance, if one preservative is “better” than another) or if an ingredient is bad. I’m not really sure what those words mean any more, hence this very short series on maligned ingredients (which will continue in the near...
So what are phthalates? They are esters of phthalic acid (an aromatic dicarboxylic acid) used as plasticizers, emulsifiers, and lubricants. They have low water solubility, high oil solubility, and low volatility. They’re found in fragrances, nail polishes, and many other cosmetic ingredients. They are suspected of being endocrine disruptors, that is to say they “interfere...
Fragrances show up a lot in various reports about ingredients we should avoid in our cosmetics, and there are a few reasons why this might be. One of the main concerns is that not all the fragrances or components of a fragrance are listed (although in the EU it appears they list all the various...
I’m a guest blogger on Saffire Blue’s blog today, writing about using shealoe butter in lotion bars and scrubs. I’ve been trying this stuff in everything and I love it. Here’s the informational post I wrote on this butter.For the permanent link to the second article, click here....
Many of the complaints about ethoxylated ingredients – those that have gone through the ethoxylation process, when ethylene oxide is added to fatty acid alcohols to give them detergent properties, to turn them into surfactants, like SLeS, our PEG esters, and things like ceteareth-20 – is that they contain 1,4 dioxane. A report put out by...